Read
the captions by hovering over the images, and click on them to
see them enlarged.

St Mary,
Caldecote

Caldecote parish was to the south of the
village of Beachamwell, and close enough for it to be one
of four parish churches which served the population in
England's Catholic days. However, the Reformation put an
end to the need for churches for purposes other than
congregational worship, and the living was united with
that of Cockley Cley. A fairly good description of the
ruin is given by Pevsner's revising editor in the early
1990s.

I have
said before that you shouldn't go looking for ruins in
the height of summer, so it serves me right that we
couldn't find anything. All there is is the mound where
the churchyard was, which is an obvious landmark, but of
masonry we could find no sign.

Even in
the 1840s, the meticulous White's directory omitted
Caldecote, or Cockett, to give it its other name. A hasty
revision recalled that it is a small parish in South Greenhoe
Hundred, 6 miles S.W. of Swaffham... It has 48 souls, and
662 acres of land, belonging to Sir H.R.P. Bedingfeld.

The
Bedingfields, of course, are the owners of Oxburgh Hall,
and we are on the estate here, only a mile or so to the
north of that fabulous House. Here though, all there was
on this June day was the shrieking swoop of swallows to
taunt us. I shall go back one winter. Until then, I shall
look out for other people's photographs.